Ghost Recon Wildlands will be the biggest and most ambitious take on the series

Gather your friends as you take on some of the biggest targets in the war against drugs in the upcoming Ghost Recon Wildlands.

Ubisoft has thrown away with the mission based levels in the previous Ghost Recon games for an open-world military shooter. It’s a bold move which has many fans scratching their heads including mine but after playing a few segments of Ghost Recon Wildlands, I can see the direction and ambitious plan the developers have behind this game.

In the past, Ghost Recon has always emphasised a co-operative game and with Ghost Recon Wildlands – the game is definitely made to play with others. The scope of the open world is massive and I’ve been told probably about three times that this is the biggest map Ubisoft has ever created. Set in the country of Bolivia, the map pretty much features every kind of environment you can think of from large open deserts to dense jungles with lots of cover and even snow-capped mountains – the world of Ghost Recon Wildlands has it all.

Open world maps are great if it’s filled with actual content and it wasn’t till we got into the nitty gritty of it till I started realising why moving the series away from the corridor levels fits a series like Ghost Recon. The missions are your playground and it’s up to you and your team to decide on how to tackle it. We had a mission where we must infiltrate a base and capture a target to interrogate him. Using rough military lingo on the microphone we organised a set up an attack on the target.

The game is heavily emphasised on co—operative play and without other actual real players in our Ghost team, the mission we carried will more than likely not have that strategy feel to it if it’s done with AI players. The developer spoke highly of playing with others and hands-on we checked out had myself and three other players talk and move together as a team like in a real world scenario.

Two of us set ourselves up on the hill right behind the base, this spot helped us cover the two other Ghost members moving into the base for the snatch. Again, with lots of voice communication – we took out soldiers in the path of our friendlies making their attack smooth. Enemy on the ledge, take him out. Two coming by the alley, got my sights on them. Room clear. The whole scenario actually felt like real combat and that’s exactly what the developers wanted us to feel.

Taking a note out of the other open-world titles from Ubisoft, Ghost Recon Wildlands is about doing what you want to do to accomplish missions and the way the game changes at times forces you to adapt. One mission led us to chasing an enemy who got away from us. The plan we had devised on the spot didn’t go to plan and we found ourselves scrambling to any form of transport.

Ghost Leader here, I got a pick-up. Jump in quick. We all rushed to his vehicle, hopped in and away we went chasing our target. I popped out of the car laying down fire at the escaping vehicle hoping to get a lucky shot but it wasn’t long till he pulled up next to a building and the game changed again. We ditched the car as enemies started firing at us laying down covering fire as we move into cover. The signature cover system we’ve seen in previous Tom Clancy titles is back again and the game shifts into a familiar state.

As we move in on our target, we managed to interrogate him and the demo came to close. The developers then explained to us that this situation didn’t happened in his previous demos today emphasizing the different ways the game could have gone down and the many different tactics we could have done.

Ghost Recon Wildlands is a game inspired by many other Ubisoft titles to deliver a bigger experience than what we’ve seen in the franchise. While I’ve only played two missions from the game, it’s still early to tell how much of a difference the open-world will change the game. The game is also heavily leaning on a co-operative experience and Ubisoft has mentioned the game is playable from start to finish with 4 players. We haven’t seen how it plays by itself so I’ll remain optimistic till more of the game is revealed.

Ghost Recon Wildlands strikes on March 7th 2017 for the PC, Xbox One and PS4.